Experiments in the Recruitment of Chinese Political Elites Cheng Li
Li, China Leadership Monitor, No. 26 From Selection to Election? Experiments in the Recruitment of Chinese Political Elites Cheng Li Are elections playing an important role in Chinese politics today? The simple answer is no. Is China gradually moving from selection to election in the recruitment of political elites? That is a more difficult question to answer. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is certainly unwilling to give up its monopoly on political power. Chinese leaders continue to claim, explicitly rather than implicitly, that the CCP is entitled to make all of the country’s most important personnel appointments. But since the late 1990s, especially in recent years, the Chinese authorities have experimented with some electoral methods in the selection and confirmation of Party and government officials at various levels of leadership. With a focus on both intra-Party elections and people’s congress elections, this article offers a preliminary assessment of elections in China—their significance, limitations, and impact on the Chinese political process. It is extremely unusual in China for candidates who are vying for elected posts to openly engage in campaigning, lobbying, public debates, personal attacks, and vote buying. 1 However, that is exactly what happened recently—not among political elites in Beijing but in a documentary film covering the election of student leaders at a primary school in Wuhan. In this newly released, award-winning film, Please Vote for Me (Qing wei wo toupiao), director Chen Weijun meticulously documented the entire two-week-long campaign and election process, featuring a trio of third-graders chosen by their teacher to run for the position of class monitor.2 The film revealed the motivations, behaviors, and various kinds of “dirty tactics” used by schoolkids in campaigning.
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